First full draft of next year's city budget presented, but election results could affect it

The Fort Morgan City Council on Tuesday night approved the long list of fees the city will charge next year for various services and programs, along with the amounts of fines that can be assessed in municipal court.

The city's schedule of fees lists everything the city is allowed to charge, including things like: daily green fees at Quail Dune at Fort Morgan Golf Course, the cost of a temporary permit to sell fireworks, the fee for a cemetery lot, the fine for an overdue library book, the amount paid to jurors at municipal court trials, the police department's fine for not using turn signals, the fee for renting the city pool for a pool party and much more.

The city used to adopt the fee schedule as part of the annual budget ordinance in the late fall. But that was changed a few years back to adoption of the fee schedule by resolution after the council wound up needing to make changes to fees at other times of the year.

"The revised schedule of fees for the new budget year is adopted by resolution, rather than by ordinance as with the budget itself, to allow for flexibility if changes in fees need to be made during the course of the year," City Clerk/Public Information Officer John Brennan explained.

Most of the city's fees for 2018 will be same as in 2017, but there were some changes, updates and even eliminations.

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Fort Morgan Building Department made some changes to inspection fees, mainly for ones conducted by hourly staff members after regular hours ($30 per hour) or on holidays or weekends ($40 per hour).

The department also changed the wording of some of its policies that are listed in the 2018 fee schedule. One of those re-wordings affects permit fees for manufactured homes, and it now states, "The permit fee for manufactured housing units that are set on a permanent foundation (HUD or UBC approved) shall be determined by the cost of materials for the foundation or basement requirements, other on-site improvements, and electrical, plumbing and mechanical work, using the Construction Fees table from the Building Department Fee Schedule."

Notably, the following policy was added for 2018: "The City Building Department will not locate property lines. It is the responsibility of the property owner to know where they are."

For Fort Morgan Municipal Court, there was the addition of a $65 fee for defendants' petitions to seal records in criminal cases. This was added due to new state legislation.

For the Recreation Department, a $100 fee for using the softball field with lights was added, and some fees for programs no longer offered were eliminated.

The Streets Department has a change in the fee for boring in an unpaved right of way, lowering the cost to $1 per linear foot of excavation from the current $1.50 per linear foot charge.

The only other changes to the various fees collected by the city that will take effect in 2018 are some state liquor licensing fees, but those are something the state Liquor Enforcement Division mandates and that the city collects and then passes on to the state, according to Brennan.

But that's not to say that there may not be other changes to city fees that may be put in place next year.

"From time to time, we have to modify fees in the middle of the year. The reason we have to do that is sometimes the state makes changes on fees that we're required to charge for state purposes," City Manager Jeff Wells said. "With that, there could be the possibility that we could amend this down the road. But this is what we anticipate will be the fees for 2018."

2018 city budget

City Treasurer Jeanne Kinney passed out to the council copies of the first full draft of the 2018 city budget, as the council's rules of procedure requires to happen by the second meeting in October.

The draft 2018 budget includes a projection for $59.91 million in revenue and $59.17 million in planned expenditures, leaving $774,144 not specifically allocated.

"This is the item-by-item budget," Wells said. "There are a few places in the budget where it demonstrates that we might be a little bit over budget. Some of those areas will require some spending out of reserves. Some of it will require us to cut a little bit."

But this draft budget also does not take into account what would happen to city revenue if the city's sales tax increase ballot issue, called 2C, passes in the Nov. 7 election.

City staff has been working on multiple versions of the budget, though, with one including extra sales tax revenue and more city streets projects, so that information will be ready if needed.

But because of the uncertainty of what the election results will be, the council put off the first adoption of the budget that typically would have happened Tuesday night. That way, the first budget ordinance adoption likely would happen on election night and then council and city staff would have until the second November meeting for holding a public hearing, amending the budget as needed and then voting on the final adoption of the budget.

"We didn't want to adopt a budget on first reading and have second reading on the night of final count for the election and determine that it needed to be added or removed," Wells said.

If the ballot issue passes, the overall city budget's revenue projection and expenditures and the specific budgets for the Streets Department and the Capital Improvement Fund would be affected. There would be $1.9 million in projected sales tax revenue added with it all designated to increased allocations for improvement projects added.

Regardless of whether the ballot issue passes, the about $900,000 the draft budget currently includes for streets maintenance and improvements would stay in it, Wells pointed out. Any new sales tax revenue for streets would be added to that.

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